This worlds a bubble. Ascribed to Bacon by Thomas Farnaby. (1629). Appeared in his Book of Epigrams; and by Joshua SylvesterPanthea. Appendix. (1630). See also Wottonianæ. P. 513. Attributed to Bishop Usher. See Miscellanes. H. W. Gent. (1708).

Fly away, pretty moth, to the shade Of the leaf where you slumbered all day;Be content with the moon and the stars, pretty moth, And make use of your wings while you may. * * * * * *But tho dreams of delight may have dazzled you quite, They at last found it dangerous play;Many things in this world that look bright, pretty moth, Only dazzle to lead us astray. Thos. Haynes BaylyFly away, pretty Moth.

He sees that this great roundabout,The world, with all its motley rout, Church, army, physic, law,Its customs and its businesses,Is no concern at all of his, And sayswhat says he?Caw. Vincent BourneThe Jackdaw. Cowpers trans.

Tis a very good world we live inTo spend, and to lend, and to give in;But to beg, or to borrow, or ask for our own;Tis the very worst world that ever was known. J. Bromfield. As given in The Mirror, under The Gatherer. Sept. 12, 1840. Quoted by Irving in Tales of a Traveller. Prefixed to Pt. II. Another similar version attributed to Earl of Rochester.

This is the best world, that we live in,To lend and to spend and to give in:But to borrow, or beg, or to get a mans own,It is the worst world that ever was known. From A Collection of Epigrams. (1737).

The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric. Sir Thomas BrowneReligio Medici.

Well, well, the world must turn upon its axis, And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails,And live and die, make love and pay our taxes, And as the veering winds shift, shift our sails. ByronDon Juan. Canto II. St. 4.

Socrates, quidem, cum rogaretur cujatem se esse diceret, Mundanum, inquit; totius enim mundi se incolam et civem arbitrabatur. Socrates, indeed, when he was asked of what country he called himself, said, Of the world; for he considered himself an inhabitant and a citizen of the whole world. CiceroTusculanarum Disputationum. Bk. V. 37. 108.

Quel est-il en effet? Cest un verre qui luit,Quun souffle peut detruire, et quun souffle a produit. What is it [the world], in fact? A glass which shines, which a breath can destroy, and which a breath has produced. De CauxLHorloge de Sable. (1745). In DIsraelis Curiosities of Literature. Imitations and Similarities.

Since every man who lives is born to die,And none can boast sincere felicity,With equal mind, what happens let us bear,Nor joy nor grieve too much for things beyond our care.Like pilgrims, to th appointed place we tend;The worlds an inn, and death the journeys end. DrydenPalamon and Arcite. Bk. III. L. 2,159.

I take the world to be but as a stage,Where net-maskt men doo play their personage. Du BartasDivine Weekes and Workes. Dialogue Between Heraclitus and Democritus. The world is a stage; each plays his part, and receives his portion. Found in Winschootens Seeman. (1681). Bohns Collection, 1857. JuvenalSatires. III. 100. (Natio comda est.)

Pythagoras said that this world was like a stage,Whereon many play their parts; the lookers-on the sagePhilosophers are, saith he, whose part is to learnThe manners of all nations, and the good from the bad to discern. Richard EdwardsDamon and Pythias.

Shall I speak truly what I now see below?The World is all a carkass, smoak and vanity,The shadow of a shadow, a playAnd in one word, just Nothing. Owen FellthamResolves. P. 316. (Ed. 1696). From the Latin said to have been left by Lipsius to be put on his grave.

Eppur si muove. (Epur.) But it does move. GalileoBefore the Inquisition. (1632). Questioned by Karl von Geble; also by Prof. Heis, who says it appeared first in the Dictionnaire Historique. Caen. (1789). Guisar says it was printed in the Lehrbuch der Geschichte. Wurtzburg. (1774). Conceded to be apocryphal. Earliest appearance in Abbé IrailhQuerelles Litteraires.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fadeA breath can make them, as a breath has madeBut a bold peasantry, their countrys pride,When once destroyd can never be supplied. GoldsmithDeserted Village. L. 51.

The world goes up and the world goes down, And the sunshine follows the rain;And yesterdays sneer and yesterdays frown Can never come over again, Sweet wife. No, never come over again. Charles KingsleyDolcino to Margaret.

It is an ugly world. Offend Good people, how they wrangle,The manners that they never mend, The characters they mangle.They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod, And go to church on SundayAnd many are afraid of God And more of Mrs. Grundy. Frederick Locker-LampsonThe Jesters Plea.

Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his handHe took the golden compasses, preparedIn Gods eternal store, to circumscribeThis universe and all created things:One foot he centred, and the other turnedRound through the vast profundity obscure,And said, Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds,This be thy just circumference, O World.MiltonParadise Lost. Bk. VII. L. 224. God is like a skillful Geometrician. Sir Thomas BrowneReligio Medici. Pt. I. Sect. XVI. Nature geometrizeth and observeth order in all things. Sir Thomas BrowneGarden of Cyrus. Ch. III. The same idea appears in ComberCompanion to the Temple. (Folio 1684). God acts the part of a Geometrician . His government of the World is no less mathematically exact than His creation of it. (Quoting Plato.) John NorrisPractical Discourses. II. P. 228. (Ed. 1693). God Geometrizes is quoted as a traditional sentence used by Plato, in PlutarchSymposium. By a carpenter mankind was created and made, and by a carpenter mete it was that man should be repaired. ErasmusParaphrase of St. Mark. Folio 42.

This world is all a fleeting show, For mans illusion given;The smiles of joy, the tears of woe,Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, Theres nothing true but Heaven. MooreThis World is all a Fleeting Show.

This outer world is but the pictured scroll Of worlds within the soul;A colored chart, a blazoned missal-book, Whereon who rightly lookMay spell the splendors with their mortal eyes, And steer to Paradise. Alfred NoyesThe Two Worlds.

Think, in this battered Caravanserai,Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day, How Sultán after Sultán with his PompAbode his destined Hour, and went his way. Omar KhayyamRubaiyat. St. 17. FitzGeralds trans.

Quod fere totus mundus exerceat histrionem. Almost the whole world are players. Petronius ArbiterAdapted from Fragments. No. 10. (Ed. 1790). Over the door of Shakespeares theatre, The Globe, Bankside, London, was a figure of Hercules; under this figure was the above quotation. It probably suggested All the worlds a stage.

Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds, and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him he returned this answer: Do you not think it is a matter worthy of lamentation that where there is such a vast multitude of them we have not yet conquered one? PlutarchOn the Tranquillity of the Mind. One world is not sufficient; he [Alexander the Great] fumes unhappy in the narrow bounds of this earth. Quoted from JuvenalSatires. X.

My soul, whats lighter than a feather? Wind.Than wind? The fire. And what than fire? The mind.Whats lighter than the mind? A thought. Than thought?This bubble world. What than this bubble? Nought. QuarlesEmblems. Bk. I. 4.

The worlde bie diffraunce ys ynn orderr founde. RowleyThe Tournament. Same idea in PascalPensées. Bernardin de St. PierreEtudes de la Nature. BurkeReflections on the French Revolution. HoraceEpistle 12. LucanPharsalia. LonginusRemark on the Eloquence of Demosthenes.

If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes,some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong,and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other. Sydney SmithSketches of Moral Philosophy. P. 309.

A mad world, my masters. John TaylorWestern Voyage. First line. Middleton. Title of a play. (1608). Nicholas Breton. Title of a pamphlet. (1603). Mundus furiosus. (a mad world.) Inscription of a book by JanseniusGallo-Belgicus. (1596).

The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion. ThackerayVanity Fair.

Heed not the folk who sing or say In sonnet sad or sermon chill,Alas, alack, and well-a-day! This round worlds but a bitter pill. We too are sad and careful; still Wed rather be alive than not. Graham R. TomsonBallade of the Optimist.

If we suppose a sufficient righteousness and intelligence in men to produce presently, from the tremendous lessons of history, an effective will for a world peacethat is to say, an effective will for a world law under a world governmentfor in no other fashion is a secure world peace conceivablein what manner may we expect things to move towards this end? It is an educational task, and its very essence is to bring to the minds of all men everywhere, as a necessary basis for world cooperation, a new telling and interpretation, a common interpretation, of history. H. G. WellsOutline of History. Ch. XLI. Par. 2.

Was ist ihm nun die Welt? ein weiter leerer Raum,Fortunens Spielraum, frei ihr Rad herum zu rollen. What is the world to him now? a vast and vacant space, for fortunes wheel to roll about at will. WielandOberon. VIII. 20.

The worlds a bubbleand the life of manLess than a span.In his conception wretched, and from the wombSo to the tomb.Nurst from the cradle, and brought up to yearsWith cares and fears.Who then to frail mortality shall trust,But limns in water, and but writes in dust. WottonThe World. Ode to Bacon.